Somehow I find myself involved in not one but two real-life gallery shows right now. (This is unusual for me, most of what I do is for reproduction rather than wall-hanging.)

First is the Actual Size show, at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, a show in which all pieces must be the same size - 8 1/2 x 11". I entered a modified version of my Morton's Girl/Judith image under the title "She Reigns (Judith)" that seems to be getting good reactions from gallery visitors.

The other exhibit is actually a benefit auction for the exhibition program at Paint Creek Center for the Arts in Rochester, Michigan. All the participants were given blank CDs and jewel cases to do with as they pleased. Some went as far as dismantling them completely into abstract sculptures, but I decided to keep mine functional. The idea is to make a mix disc of "guilty pleasures" - your most embarrassing favorite songs - and share the disc with a friend. I put together a sort of homem…

So this is my cover illustration for this week's Metro Times. The cover story is about local authors and small presses around Michigan. Someone on the editorial staff remembered a drawing I'd done years ago (around 2000) for an MT in-house promo ad and thought it'd make a good cover. Except I'd already recycled that drawing in 2005 for an ad promoting another literary supplement, the annual fiction contest! Oh well. I redrew the image, amped it up a little and added color, and everyone on staff loved it, so there it is.

I'm fond of it, though it's really just a angst-ified version of the "duck hitting a computer with a hammer" art that every office on earth has a 100,000th-generation photocopy of, tacked up in a cubicle somewhere.

Some recent stuff: Above is the cover art for this week's Metro Times, an illustration for an article about the 7 "deadly sins" of children's pop culture and the pitfalls they present to parents.

Also in this issue is my review of Elvis Road, a massive, manic comic strip by two Swiss cartoonists. I hear that at least one reader was asking for it at good ol' Green Brain Comics after reading my article, so that's gratifying.

Finally, here's an article about the arts group here in Hamtown, Hatch, that explains everything we're up to (and against) better than I could. Closing reception for the Exquisite Corpse show is tomorrow night.

The arts group I'm part of here in Hamtramck, Hatch, has a show up now of exquisite corpses, collaborative figures randomly cobbled together from pieces designed by 21 different local artists. Here are my four pieces, reassembled into their original state. I started out with the idea of illustrating the 7 deadly sins, scraped the notion early on, but kept a vague "angels vs. devils" theme (without taking sides in the fight myself...). Photos of the panels by Krysti Spence.

The "chest" panel depicts a hot rod version of one of my favorite objects, the first-ever artificial heart pump, designed by General Motors and first successfully used here in Detroit. There's one in a case at Harper Hospital here, another one's in the Smithsonian. It looks like a chrome-plated lawn mower engine, with glass piston cylinder things on the sides and big analog knobs and gauges. You can almost make it out here.

So here's some stuff I've been doing for the Metro Times lately. First, for the Summer Guide issue, the editorial staff all went on short trips within about a two-hour drive of Detroit and wrote about what they found. I did a full-page comic strip about the town of Petrolia, Ontario, site of North America's first oil well. Sample panel above, and you can find the full strip here. (Edited with new link, since the MT one seems to be broken...)

That same issue I did an illustration for an article about how the Sgt. Pepper's album wasn't as innovative as you think. I punted on the likenesses, but you get the idea. I'm particularly proud of Paul's skull-n-crossbones boxer shorts.

What else? Lots to see on the Dr. Sketchy blog, since the last session was a big hit. Also I finally got to do the last panel of "Good Ol' Conan the Barbarian" in living color over on Serializer.net (if you've seen the str…